E3 2017 - Moss Hands On Impressions

This year's Sony PlayStation press conference shined a light on a variety of games coming to PSVR in the future, and easily one of the most striking games in the upcoming line-up would have to be Moss. I had the chance to check out the game early on during E3, and the game was actually my very first foray into VR. Immediately, the thing that popped out to me was the almost storybook presentation. The camera, by default, is off to the side of the sections of the level, and while you can of course move your head to look around, there's definitely the focus on the sideways view.

Although you control your warrior mouse friend "Quill," the game is very much a dance between controlling the mouse and using your controller to interact with objects in the environment, dragging them around and completing environmental puzzles. You don't just have the ability to control random objects, either, as some enemies can also be dragged around in your effort to complete the demo's various puzzles. One of my favorite moments playing the demo was when having finished the last puzzle, your friendly mouse popped out of the center of this almost bird-cage looking mechanism, waving to you.

I did have to mention to the developers that I felt that the game could use an option to play with the PlayStation Move and PlayStation Move Navigation controllers. As it currently stands, in order to drag things along, you have to use both your hands holding the Dualshock 4, whereas allowing players to use the PlayStation Move controller would let them interact with the environment with only one of their hands, freeing their other hand to better control the mouse. It actually sounded like they weren't aware of the Navigation controller before I mentioned it, so hopefully that becomes an option when the game does eventually release. Regardless, I have to give the developers props for how cool it was to actually lean in to the game world in order to reach parts of the environment that you needed to interact with.

Outside of the motion controls to interact with the environment (which gave the game a really interesting "puzzle box" feeling), players use Quill, swinging his sword and jumping around, to traverse through each section of the world as you continue to mess around with it. The combat was relatively simple in the demo I played, but the developers I talked to made it clear that the combat should evolve with more nuance added to it the further that players traverse through the game.

The game's artstyle was very striking, with stylized character models and very nice atmospheric lighting in sections. The final shot in the demo was especially nice looking, and from a graphical standpoint Moss is definitely one of the better looking PSVR games I've played. The game's soundtrack, while decidedly a little more low-key compared to some other titles Sony had to show at their PlayStation VR, still added a lot to the games atmosphere.

If nothing else, Moss adds a little bit of childlike wonder to the upcoming PlayStation VR library. I eagerly await more information of the game, and I hope that we can get a release window set in the coming months.

If you want to know more about this and other announcements happening at E3 then be sure to check out our E3 2017 Coverage Hub.